


The (Im)proper Execution of Butterscotch Pancakes

by puddlestomping (orphan_account)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Fluff, Gen, butterscotch pancakes, i think i got diabetes writing this, rampant cuteness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-11 15:02:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/479767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/puddlestomping
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It isn’t unusual for John to be woken by the sound of the smoke alarm beeping madly, chirping at him to get up and get the fire extinguisher to keep his flatmate from burning down the entire building.</p><p>Off a prompt from Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The (Im)proper Execution of Butterscotch Pancakes

**Author's Note:**

> Giant thanks to MeiLu for beta-ing and being an awesome nitpicker :D

It isn’t unusual for John to be woken by the sound of the smoke alarm beeping madly, chirping at him to get up and get the fire extinguisher to keep his flatmate from burning down the entire building. The smoke alarm is, predictably, usually accompanied by a plume of black, acrid smoke, which greets him the second he opens his bedroom door.

He covers his face with one sleeve of his dressing gown, flailing the other arm halfheartedly at the air. The smoke in the hallway is even thicker than in his bedroom, and he crouches low in an attempt to escape most of it, struggling to get his other arm into his sleeve.

“Sherlock!” He rounds the corner to the kitchen and skids a little on the tile; in his haste to get downstairs he hadn’t bothered to put on shoes. “What have you done this time?”

Instead of responding, Sherlock frowns down at the tray in his hands and prods at the black, lumpy objects crusted onto it with one finger. “Interesting,” he mutters.

“What?”

“They aren’t soupy in the middle this time.” He dumps the tray unceremoniously into the sink. It joins three other trays already there, all containing various ruined forms of charred lumps.

John stares at the trays, then around the room, blinking the last remnants of sleep out of his eyes. The kitchen table is entirely covered with a frightening mess of boxes, bags, and scraps of paper, and a white powdery substance coats it all in a thin layer. A mostly-empty carton of eggs perches precariously on top of a pile of papers—last week’s notes on carbolic acid, probably—and a tottering pile of bowls takes up most of the counter space.

Sherlock’s laptop is seemingly the only thing in the kitchen to escape the mess: even Sherlock himself has something white smeared on the end of his nose. On the screen, the Internet is open to…a recipe for butterscotch pancakes.

“Sherlock, are you trying to _bake_?”

He sniffs, once. “That is the term most common people would deem to use.”

“Oh, really?” John can feel the beginnings of a grin, but bites it back. “And what do you call it?”

“ _Science_ , John.” Sherlock’s brow furrows, and his plastic protective goggles slide a little out of place on his nose.

Only then does John notice that along with the goggles, Sherlock is also sporting heavy-duty work gloves and a black rubber lab apron. He’s outfitted as if he’s preparing to head into a biohazard zone rather than a venture into the realm of baking.

“Sherlock,” John starts, then breaks off in a snort.

“What?” Sherlock demands, put off. “What could you possibly find humorous about my experiments? I was under the impression that you thought they were—“ His mouth twists distastefully—“ _boring_.”

“It’s just—” John giggles but makes a heroic attempt at schooling his features. “You’re just _baking_ , Sherlock. You don’t need to put on a hazmat suit for some baking soda.” He waves a hand at the apron, chemical-stained and acid-burned at the edges.

Sherlock looks down at himself contemplatively. “I don’t see why not. I am merely exercising reasonable precautions.” He somehow manages to extricate an empty bowl from the mess and begins dumping ingredients in haphazardly.

“You, reasonable? And ‘exercising precaution’?” John has to laugh at that. “Last week a murderer almost shot your head off when you didn’t look both ways before crossing the street.”

Sherlock says nothing to this, cracking eggs into a bowl with a bit more force than necessary. John wonders if you can taste stubbornness in food.

“Point taken, I assume.” John squints at the laptop screen, tying the belt of his dressing gown more securely. The website proclaims a meal Sure to Brighten Your Sweetheart’s Day!

John is suddenly overtaken by a deep, sincere hope that Sherlock isn’t actually trying to impress a girl with his cooking capabilities. It would actually be more of a relief if he were trying to find another way to secretly poison Anderson.

“Hang on, are you trying to make pancakes in the _oven_?”

“The attempts with the stove were less than satisfactory.” Sherlock splashes what’s hopefully vanilla extract into the bowl. “I ran out of pans and switched to the oven. The results so far have been…” He glances at the smoldering black chunks in the sink. “Inconclusive.”

“Sherlock…” John chokes back another laugh. “You can’t make pancakes in the oven. Or the toaster, either, so don’t try that.”

“I wasn’t planning to,” Sherlock says haughtily. “It broke four days ago.”

“Nice use of the passive tense. _You_ broke it.”

“That wasn’t passive tense, John.” He doesn’t deny the accusation, though, because he knows that John knows that the toaster died violently in a rather unfortunate incident involving hydrochloric acid.

“Not the point, and you know it.” John sighs, but can’t suppress the idiotic grin plastered onto his face. “Come on, get a clean bowl—without any human bits in it, thanks—and I’ll help you make the pancakes.”

Truth be told, the main reason that John volunteered to help Sherlock bake was the hope of avoiding a massive, kitchen-ruining disaster—but of course, Sherlock Holmes cannot simply _bake_. It must be a lengthy and dramatic process, complete with spilled milk and broken eggshells littering the floor.

The mess manifests about halfway through the mixing process, when Sherlock is meticulously measuring out two and a half cups of flour. John slips on a bit of raw egg on the floor and bumps Sherlock’s elbow, sending the whole bag flying. Flour explodes into the air and coats everything in the kitchen in a thick layer of white—including the two very surprised flatmates standing right in the middle of it.

After about ten seconds, as the dust settles and John sneezes violently four times in a row, Sherlock carefully sets down the bag of flour (sending up another little _poof_ from the counter) and coughs.

“Well,” he says. “That was…informative.”

There’s a moment of silence when John looks around the kitchen and thinks _shit, I’m going to have to clean this all up_ , and wonders if Lestrade would let him get away with murder if he claims Sherlock slipped in a puddle of milk and bashed his head. But then he looks over at his best friend—genius detective, brilliant scientist—who currently sports grayish hair and dusty white mad-scientist eyebrows, and falls over laughing so hard he can’t breathe.

And this is how Lestrade finds them ten minutes later when he stops by to inquire about a case: laughing hysterically, sitting on their kitchen floor, covered in flour and surrounded by failed attempts at pancakes, and it’s all Lestrade can do to just shake his head and get a picture on his phone.


End file.
